The poet looks over a broad terrain and over vast stretches of time. He makes observations on the problems of his own time, to be sure, but he is a partisan only in the sense that he is a partisan of the truth. He arouses doubts and uncertainties and brings everything into question.
—Zbigniew Herbert, quoted in “Objects Don’t Lie: Talk with a Polish Poet” by Stephen Stepanchev, The New Leader, Vol. 51, August 1968, No. 16.
Showing posts with label partisan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label partisan. Show all posts
explicit, concrete, partisan
Politically conscious poets tend to be more profound, not less. Look again at the record. In our own time the three most formidable poets, it seems to me, were intensely "political": the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, Vallejo and Brecht (as poet). Political in the most explicit, concrete, partisan way. What's more, their aesthetic achievement is because of their politics, not in spite of it. The most credible, full, caring love poetry has been written by one of the most expressly political poets. I refer, again, to Hikmet. In part this is because he can, and does, write of the other—who is never merely an excuse for self-immersion, and who is not reduced, either, to the condition of a delicious ahistorical object.
—James Scully, "Remarks on Political Poetry," Line Break: poetry as social practice (Bay Press, 1988)
—James Scully, "Remarks on Political Poetry," Line Break: poetry as social practice (Bay Press, 1988)
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